Americans and the Obsession with Service

Published on May 29, 2025

I'm currently traveling in the United States, in Chicago. On X, I had heard a lot about Americans addicted to all sorts of services who complained during vacations in Europe that we don't pay as much attention to services as they do.

The most well-known example is restaurants: in the United States, the waiter pampers customers to get their tip.

Americans outsource everything, it's a different philosophy of life.

There are valets everywhere in restaurants. They prefer to pay about twenty dollars to have their car parked rather than do it themselves. In France, this only exists in high-end luxury restaurants. In Chicago, as soon as it's a decent restaurant, there's a valet. This is also something that exists in buildings. A valet is hired by the condominium to park residents' vehicles. And, like with restaurants, these aren't exceptional cases.

I was looking for a gym downtown to work out during my stay. To my great surprise, it's very difficult to find one. I expected to have one on every street corner.

But no, Americans prefer small private coaching studios rather than paying for a subscription to a regular gym and going to work out when they want. It must cost a fortune to do the same exercises they would do at the gym.

Americans do this in all areas, for example, hiring someone to walk their dog is very common while in Europe it's nonexistent.

I even saw a security guard in front of a school playground — as if the president's child was there.

In the United States, paying someone to maintain your garden is classic. In Europe, hiring someone to do housework is already rare, so for the garden even more so.

What Could Be the Impact on Society

Employment Ease

With these millions of small jobs that exist, it must be easier to find work when you're struggling or simply to supplement your income.

On the contrary, when this kind of job doesn't exist, the job market becomes very rigid.

Rigor

In the USA, there's neither unemployment nor welfare. You have to earn your money yourself. Having all these jobs available allows you to forge work discipline rather than waiting for your allowance at the end of the month, which encourages idleness. These jobs are poorly paid and have no prospects for advancement. This motivates working more and taking risks to get a better job and better salary.

The Vicious Circle

When you consume all these services, you need a lot of income — you can't rest on your laurels and take it easy — because, if you no longer have money, you can no longer use all these services.

We don't have this problem in France, we only have "mandatory" payments like rent, small bills and food. Losing income has much less impact in this case since our expenses are minimal.

But in the United States, losing income means no longer being able to park your car when you go to a restaurant, no longer being able to go to the gym, no longer being able to go out because you have to walk the dog or take care of your garden, etc.

This completely changes the pace of life. When you've tasted all these little advantages, it must be difficult to get rid of them. So it encourages working hard to keep this lifestyle.

It's really a completely different way of functioning than in France.

What If This Had a Much Greater Impact on Society?

The United States is much richer than Europe. Maybe the intensive use of various services has a great impact on this wealth produced?

Getting rid of all these little tasks that burden us might be much more important than we imagine.

These are lots of little stresses removed: not having to find a parking space for your car, not having time to walk your dog after a workday that ran longer than expected, not having to think about what exercises to do to stay in shape, etc.

Having a mind more freed from these tasks might allow us to multiply our productivity at work. On a country scale, this could represent a few GDP points.

The other interesting aspect is that money circulates much faster in the economy and especially locally.

When everyone uses various services, money moves very quickly and enriches everyone. When you pay a valet to park your car at the restaurant, he lives in your city, surely less than 30 minutes from your home.

He in turn will pay someone to walk his dog when he works on a busy weekend.

In turn, the dog walker will call a delivery person when he orders food on Uber Eats.

In a big city like Chicago, money circulates indefinitely like this and enriches everyone.

Conclusion

From our European point of view, we criticize Americans a lot for functioning this way. They manage their money poorly and spend it on trivial things.

But I think this functioning, opposite to ours, has many positive points. We Europeans would surely benefit from being inspired by it.